Walking the Tideline

Loss and Renewal on the Oregon Coast Trail

By: Caroline Kurtz

Narrated by: Suzanne Toren

In Walking the Tideline, Caroline Kurtz solo hikes the rugged, beautiful Oregon Coast—an expedition of isolation, adventure, joy, and grief inside the emotional wilderness of finding one's identity after the death of a loved one.

In her third memoir, Portland-based author Caroline Kurtz travels the coast of Oregon on foot in her late sixties, tracing the boundary of sand and salt water, rock and forests, carrying her shelter and food as she navigates the edges of solace and resolution after the death of her husband. During her journey, Kurtz grieves as she reflects on her long, and at times rocky, marriage to Mark, whom she had known and loved since she was a teenager in boarding school in Ethiopia. As she navigates the adventures encountered along the trail—leaky tents, hitching rides, chance encounters, and beautiful landscapes—she intertwines the historical events of coastal Oregon with her spiritual experience, giving space for the shattering of an old identity and the planting of a new self, nourished and enlightened by the depths of a profoundly complex and considered life.

Kurtz spent her early years in Oregon before her parents moved her and her siblings to remote Ethiopia, where she spent her childhood and teen years, before returning to America for college, where she reunited with and married Mark. The two lived variously in Portland, Ethiopia, and Kenya, and retired to Portland, where Caroline now lives.

©2025 Caroline Kurtz (P)2025 Recorded Books

A walk with a new friend

Caroline Kurtz's WALKING THE TIDELINE is a memoir of her hike along the Oregon Coast Trail at the age of 64, one year after the death of her husband, Mark. I rarely read memoirs, but as a long-married (and as yet unwidowed!) woman I found the subject had a kind of terrible fascination. The book turned out to be a very personal weave of Oregon local history, Caroline's own unlocal upbringing as the daughter of Presbyterian missionaries in Ethiopia, and meditations on such universal themes as loss and belonging. The effect is really like taking a long walk with a friend. The conversation skips around as a new scene comes into view, the weather or the terrain shifts, feet grow weary, or spirits are revived by an ice cream cone. At times I got impatient—Come on, Caroline! You're overthinking this! Then suddenly we were off on some new conversation. Our very differences built up my sense of a complete, not perfect, but absolutely relatable person. A new friend, in fact.

As Caroline walks to reconnect with life after the alienation of becoming a widow, I, also, felt a revived connection with humanity. Even without the fabulous Oregon scenery, this is a journey worth taking—perhaps, while you're folding the laundry.

SW